


A Certain Slant of Light

by CaseofUnderjoy (lullabelle)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: All the Internalizations, Angst and Feels, Communicating is Hard, Dean Winchester in Hell, Dubious Consent, Emetophobia, Graphic Torture, Internalized Biphobia, M/M, Past Dean Winchester/Rhonda Hurley, Sam Being Sam, Season/Series 09, Sexual Assault, internalized ableism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 18:50:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17289476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lullabelle/pseuds/CaseofUnderjoy
Summary: A desperate phone call and a prayer from the past call Castiel to Dean's side -- Dean has fallen prey to a djinn, one who doesn't feed on wishes, but memories. With Dean's whole history being slowly devoured, it's up to Cas to rescue him from the prison of his own mind. Can Cas save Dean before the clock runs out? And what will the act of saving him mean for their strained relationship if he does?





	A Certain Slant of Light

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been floating around in my drafts in some form or another since 2014, so I'm thrilled to finally post it. 
> 
> This takes place in Season 9, at some point after Castiel has stolen another angel's grace, Gadreel has been kicked to the curb, and Dean's acquired the Mark of Cain, but before everything goes to Hell in a hand basket.
> 
> Thank you [slasher48](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slasher48/) for the beta -- your insights are always invaluable, and you push me to be a better writer. Any mistakes are inconsistencies are wholly my own.

_“Cas, are you there? Sammy’s hurt. He’s hurt, uh… he’s hurt pretty bad -- “_

Castiel jerks awake. 

_“And, um -- I think you know that I’m pissed at you, okay?”_

Castiel frowns as he gropes for his cell phone, left on the motel’s bed stand. He hasn’t spoken to Dean in a couple of days, and is unaware of any reason Dean would be angry at him. They’d spoken briefly on the phone two nights ago, just to touch base and, as far as Castiel knows Sam had been fine then -- though, he has to admit, Sam and Dean both have a knack for finding themselves in mortal peril rather suddenly. Not that Castiel is one to talk.

He’s been sleeping deeply, lately. During the months he’d been without his grace he’d slept restlessly. Sleeping now, to preserve his strength and hopefully slow the decay of his borrowed grace, is a heavy and dreamless affair that feels more akin to being temporarily dead.

But he wakes for Dean’s prayers.

_“But I don’t care that the angels fell. So whatever you did or didn’t do, it doesn’t matter, okay? We’ll work it out. Please, man, I need you here.”_

Now Castiel’s sure that something’s wrong, something more than whatever Dean’s praying to him about. The angels fell _months_ ago. This prayer feels wrong. And now that he’s concentrating on it there’s a strange, distant quality to it, something off about the feeling behind it. Whatever the circumstances, the sound of Dean begging for his help sets off a fluttering panic in the pit of Castiel’s stomach.

Just as he’s pulling up Dean’s name in his contacts, the phone begins to ring in his hand. It’s not Dean.

“Sam?” he asks. “I heard -- ”

“Dean’s in trouble,” Sam cuts him off.

“Tell me what happened.” Castiel throws off his blankets and stands, immediately regretting moving so fast. His clothes are draped over the chair. He locates his shoes half-under the bed stand. “I thought I heard Dean praying to me, but it was strange. I think… I think it might have been an old prayer, repeating.”

“We were working this case,” Sam starts. Castiel puts his phone on speaker so that he can listen and dress at the same time. He’d learned while he was human that sleeping is much more comfortable in less restrictive clothing, if you’re somewhere where it’s safe and socially acceptable to disrobe. “People falling into comas. It was going on for a while before anyone caught on to a pattern, because most of the victims were elderly… We went to talk to this one guy who’d been friends with some of the victims. When he didn’t answer his door we broke in, and found him with this -- this _man_ leaning over him. Bald, wearing a suit. He took off as soon as he saw us. We chased him through the house, and around the back. He went into one of the horse stables… Dean followed him inside, but I thought I’d run around to the other end, try to cut him off. But when I went in through the far end, I couldn’t see them. Eventually I found them -- the guy, or whatever, had dragged Dean into one of the stalls. He was leaning over him the same way he had been over the guy in the farmhouse. Feeding on him in some way, I think. I shot him. He’s dead. But Dean’s still unconscious and won’t wake up.”

“Where are you?” Castiel asks. His clothes are now on. He retrieves his angel blade from beneath his pillow, and the keys to the Continental from the bed stand. He’s ready to go. 

Sam gives him an address. Castiel is over two hours away, even if he breaks the speed limit. “I’m on my way. Call me if anything changes.”

“I will. Be careful approaching the house. I’m going to call an ambulance for the man inside.”

Castiel hangs up the phone. He wonders if he should have said goodbye. He’s not great at phone etiquette, he knows, but he thinks he’s getting better. Anyway, he doesn’t like goodbyes much. They tend to be more painful and more permanent than intended.

\---

Castiel calls Sam again when he’s an hour out, even though Sam had promised to call if something changed. He just wants to check in, and maybe get details. Sam assures him that nothing significant has changed: Dean twitches like he’s dreaming, but still doesn’t wake. When he asks Sam to check the eyes of the dead thing to see if he can get a better idea of what they’re dealing with, Sam replies with an, “Um…”

“What is it?”

“I can’t really check his eyes. When I say I shot him… I shot him in the head. A couple of times. He doesn’t have a lot of face left.”

“What about his arms? Can you check him for marks?”

There’s a rustling sound, and Castiel assumes that Sam has put down the phone to maneuver the body around. He hears him say, “Shit,” at a distance, followed by more rustling. “Cas?” Sam says into the phone once more. “I’ve got to go. I need to tie this guy up. He’s… he’s not breathing, not yet, but I think the front of his skull is growing back. I’m pretty sure he’s healing.”

“Go,” Castiel says. “I’ll be there soon.”

\---

Castiel makes good time. He guesses that the ambulance for the farm’s owner has come and gone by now. He nods a perfunctory hello to Sam before rushing forward to kneel at Dean’s side. He pushes the sleeves of his trenchcoat to keep them free of his palms. Dean is pale and sweaty. He looks like he should be cold, but before Castiel’s palm even makes contact with his forehead he can tell that Dean’s skin is hot.

Castiel’s stolen grace is both familiar and unwieldy. Unlike his own grace, which was a part of him that he used intuitively and without much forethought, this grace is more like a tool that he knows how to use but made for someone with much different hands than he. He has to wrangle with it a moment before he can look inside Dean’s mind. It’s something he normally wouldn’t do without permission, but he needs to know what’s being done to him. He’ll try not to dig too deep. 

_There’s a man with dark hair in a tan coat, standing inside a barn whose walls are covered with runes and sigils. It takes Castiel a moment to realize he’s looking at himself -- he’s changed more in the past half decade, than he has in the past millennia, and that’s not accounting for the subtle changes to his vessel._

_He feels strange emotions… a dim echo of what Dean is feeling. His disbelief, his awe, his fear. “Right. And why would an angel rescue me from Hell?”_

_“Good things do happen, Dean.”_

Castiel jerks his hand away. The memory stings a bit. Dean, the Dean of that first meeting, had been right to be skeptical. Heaven had not been the friend to Dean that Castiel had presented them as, though Castiel hopes he’s made it up to him since.

He thinks he knows now, what they’re dealing with.

“What is it?” Sam asks from where he’s standing at Castiel’s shoulder. Castiel had forgotten he was there for a moment, nevermind noticing how close he’d gotten.

Castiel gestures at the man-like creature on the ground against the opposite wall of the stall. Its face is crusted with blood. It’s obviously injured, and not visibly breathing, but it also doesn’t look like something that had been shot in the face at close range just hours ago. “Check his arms.”

Sam does so. At first he tries pulling off the creature’s suit jacket, before rolling his eyes at himself and pulling out a knife. He slips it under the creature’s sleeve and uses it to rip it jacket and dress shirt to the elbow, exposing its forearm. 

Castiel hears him inhale. “Tattoos. It’s a djinn?”

Cas closes his eyes. He’d been hoping his guess was wrong. “A kind of distant cousin. They eat memories, but what they really feed on is human experience… and it appears to have already consumed Dean’s back to our first meeting.”

Sam heaves a breath. “So… how do we get rid of it?”

Cas takes off his coat off entirely. It’s warm in this building, and he needs his hands unencumbered. “Same way you kill the more common djinn. Silver knife dipped in lamb’s blood. But we need to get it to stop feeding on Dean first. The only way to do that is to either get it to let go voluntarily…” Castiel looks over at the prone figure with its wet mess of a face, “which it’s unlikely to do, while incapacitated. Or get Dean to wake up on his own. We just… need to make him aware of what’s happening.” Castiel takes a deep breath. “I can go in after him.”

Sam, sensing the hesitation, raises an eyebrow. 

“I can… dreamwalk through the memories the djinn is making him relive. A Memory Eater devours everything, but it tends to linger on the memories that have particular significance to the victim. They can be... jubilant, traumatic, educational… He’s already back to the time we first met. Or rather, the time we first met here. In the barn. It’s going to be harder for me to break through to him, in the memories before that point, because he’ll not have met me yet.” The idea makes Cas sad, though it shouldn’t. Dean existed before he met Castiel, and the way things have been going, he’ll exist long after Castiel has gone.

Sam frowns. “Is there a way I could -- ”

Cas shakes his head. “I can go into his memories myself, but I don’t think I’d have the strength to take you with me. Besides, you need to get the knife and the blood.”

Sam looks exasperated. “I _have_ a silver knife, and we’re in the middle of farm country.”

“You also need to guard us from law enforcement and possibility of the djinn waking up first.”

Sam looks like he wants to keep arguing, but they both know Castiel is right. “How long has Dean been like this?” Castiel asks.

Sam stands, wiping his hands off on his pant legs, face tense. “I called you not long after it happened. Maybe three hours, total.”

“And in that time it’s taken about five years…”

Sam sees the worry in his face increase and asks, “Will we be able to get those memories back?”

“I hope so. The djinn actually _consumes_ much slower than it feeds. It sort of… spools the memories for later, like…” Castiel gropes for a comparison, “...like a chipmunk, stuffing its cheeks. You said that it had just been feeding on the homeowner. Hopefully the creature is still chewing on that, and hasn’t started in on what it’s taken from Dean yet.” He winces internally at his own words. He should not be grateful that someone else is being hurt first. “But healing from a head wound is going to take a lot of energy, so he’ll probably be digesting quickly...”

Sam takes a deep breath. “Do you need anything from me? I want to get the lamb’s blood now before this thing heals any more.”

Castiel shakes his head. “Go.”

“Be careful,” Sam says, and runs for the door.

“You, too,” Castiel mutters. He rubs his hands together. This is going to take a lot of energy, and his energy has been in short supply lately. He puts one hand to Dean’s head, and then one over his heart, mostly because it feels right to do so, and dives in. 

\---

It’s not unlike jumping into water -- a plunge, followed by sinking. What he’s doing follows the same basic principles as dreamwalking -- as in a dream, the memories he sees will be somewhat subjective, seen how Dean experienced them and not necessarily how they were. The Memory Eater will target formative memories to savor, and discard those it doesn’t find appetizing. 

The memory Dean’s reliving now consists of a darkness so complete, that for a moment Castiel is worried that he’d overestimated his own capabilities and has failed to access Dean’s memories at all. That’s proven untrue when he hears Dean’s voice clearly through the black -- but it’s distorted, dangerous and scorched-sounding. “Just you and me in the dark… I’m sorry, I don’t know your name. I wish I did. I could whisper it to you in the quiet moments.”

Hell. Dean is reliving a memory of Hell.

There’s a thin ripping sound, and a sudden point of light appears, pouring from the wound Dean’s created in his victim’s remembered flesh, exposing its soul. The soul illuminates Dean’s face, which is both sharper and broader than his human face, smudging at the edges into a darkness that isn’t quite smoke. This must have been shortly before Castiel had come to rescue him.

Dean twirls his knife theatrically before cutting again, a vertical incision at the soul’s throat performed with a surgical precision. It reminds Castiel uncomfortably of having his grace removed. More light leaks through.

“Let me hear you, beautiful,” Dean says. He pulls away the filthy wad of rags that had been gagging the soul’s mouth and tosses it to the side. When he cuts again, deeper and too close to the first wound, the soul lets out a high-pitched keen of distress that only vaguely resembles a human scream and quickly dies down into a wet gurgle.

Castiel’s seen enough.

He rushes forward as Dean shifts his grip on the knife and raises it high. He tries to grab Dean by the arm, but even though he can touch him--feel the surprisingly human texture of his skin even, he can’t seem to truly grip it, or apply any pressure with which to stop the downward swing.

Dean buries the short knife into the soul’s temple, all the way to the hilt. The soul seems to be whimpering through the nonexistent blood in its mouth, a substance that is heard but not seen -- it’s strange what aspects of a physical form a soul remembers after centuries of torture, the inconsistencies -- holding on to the idea that blood should be choking it after a neck wound, but not necessarily remembering that once it had blood. More light pours from the soul’s mouth, the only evidence of fluid being the horrible wet sound it’s making.

Dean wiggles the knife around to elicit more distressed noises. “Unpleasant, huh?” He says. He uses his free hand to caress the soul’s cheek. It’s dry, the memory of tears lost to time and trauma. “Not many people get to stay awake through this kind of brain injury. What part of you did I hit, exactly, do you think?”

Castiel rallies himself. “Dean,” he says. Then louder, “Dean! Wake up!”

Dean continues to taunt the soul, uninterrupted. “Was it your motor skills, maybe? Nerve endings? I hope not… I have plans for those.”

“Dean,” Castiel continues. He tries to grab Dean’s arm again, but even though Castiel can feel the texture of his arm, the flesh is as unyielding as marble, as if Castiel isn’t there. Castiel removes his hand. He’s standing close to him, closer than Dean’s preference for personal space would normally allow for. “This isn’t real. Listen to me, Dean. This isn’t happening. It’s only a memory.”

“Olfactory? That’s the smell word, right?” Dean runs his fingertips over the curve of the undamaged part of the soul’s skull. “Memories?” Dean asks, after a hesitation so small, that Castiel never would have noticed it if he hadn’t been watching Dean’s face so intently.

“Yes,” Castiel says, with feeling. “Memories. Dean, this is a memory. Snap out of it.”

Dean sighs and wrenches the knife free, light flooding out of the wound in its wake. “It probably doesn’t matter. You’ve been around the block so many times, it’s a miracle you even remember you have a head.”

The soul doesn’t say anything, mouth wide and gasping. It doesn’t have a tongue.

Dean makes a disgusted noise and drops his knife to the floor. As he walks away he yells, “Hey, Alastair! What’s with giving me all your leftovers? I want a fresh one. Find me someone with fingernails.”

Castiel tries to follow, but evidently the Memory Eater has finished devouring whatever it was that made this memory particularly palatable. The scene dissolves.

\---

Castiel flies through Dean’s memory, catching glimpses like someone flipping through a picture book at high speed, uneasy in the knowledge that each of these scenes are being ripped away from Dean even as Castiel glimpses them. 

It continues like this. Snippets, bits. Everything that persisted in Dean’s memory, even the subconscious. When it comes to humans, a surprising amount sticks, but not everything. There’s only so much space inside a human mind, so a lot of what a person sees and hears is quietly shuffled out of recollection and never even missed. 

Dean remembers the look in a woman’s eyes right before he cuts them out. He remembers his eyes turning black -- there are no mirrors in his part of Hell, but he sees them reflected in his knives. Dean vividly remembers when his fingernails began turning black, but the memory is unanchored by context, which means even though it’s sharp, it’s here and gone too fast for Castiel to get his bearings enough to try reaching out again.

Dean remembers Alastair standing behind him, guiding his hand; Castiel feels the echoes of Dean’s revulsion, his glee, his desire to please.

But these are just instances. Blips in time, playing out too fast for Castiel to intrude on, to try and break through. Time is hard to keep track of, because Dean may remember a lot of one particular day, or even a lot of one particular week, and then nothing for long repetitive stretches, as he slowly learned the simple joy of pulling people apart.

Eventually, the scene changes, slows, and Castiel realizes the djinn has latched on to something appetizing. (He can’t see the djinn, but he can feel him, faintly, he thinks--like a film, subtly tainting every experience.)

Dean is on the rack. The room is completely black, outside of the apparatus on which Dean is stretched out and bloody, but Castiel doesn’t know if that’s due to an actual lack of light, or if it’s because Dean has no concept of what’s around him and his mind isn’t filling in the blanks the way it usually would. Alastair is asking Dean a question, and where Dean has said no dozens of times before, this time he says yes. Dean’s sobbing through what feels like a small earthquake, as somewhere far beneath them, the seal of a cage buckles and breaks.

Castiel can feel Dean’s despair, but somewhere beneath that is a sense of… alien satisfaction. Castiel can taste it in the back of his throat. It belongs to the djinn, as it tastes a moment that not only molded the rest of Dean’s life, but also shaped the fate of the world. The only upside is that, Castiel thinks, with such a feast laid out before it it, the djinn has yet to notice that it’s not the only creature intruding on Dean’s mind.

\---

As difficult as it had been watching Dean torture human souls... for Castiel, seeing him be tortured is harder. He had expected the djinn’s feeding frenzy to slow as they approached Dean’s first days in Hell, and the death that sent him there, but Castiel only catches the barest glimpse of Dean’s first days on the rack -- the days when Dean had looked occasionally defiant despite the fear and pain, but the defiance was the first to go under the kind of torture Dean endured -- and suddenly they are out of Hell. The procession of memories slows a bit, when Dean’s torn apart by hellhounds, but doesn’t actually stop. It’s a relief for Cas to be out of Hell, but if the djinn keeps gorging this way without pausing on individual memories, Castiel fears he’ll never even have a _chance_ at saving Dean.

Familiar faces fly by. There’s Sam, of course. It takes Castiel a moment to recognize Ruby -- she’s inhabiting a different vessel, and at the time, Dean had lacked the ability to see her real face. Dean seems freer in these memories, easier than he’s been since Castiel has known him, but even so, Castiel can see the fear of his impending death in the creases at the corner of his eyes, and reflected back in Sam’s every worried look.

Finally Dean’s memories slow to a stand-still, solidifying, and then moving forward in real time. Castiel finds himself standing in what appears to be a long-abandoned town. There’s a man in army fatigues unconscious on the ground. Sam, exhausted, is staggering toward Dean and Bobby, who look relieved to see him. 

Suddenly, the man on the ground stands and throws a knife, hard and with amazing skill. It sinks to the hilt into Sam’s back.

Castiel feels the bottom drop out of his stomach -- but the emotion is Dean’s, not his. As upsetting as it is to see Sam die, Castiel knows these events have long passed. Sam’s alive and well. Castiel shoves away the secondhand horror he’s experiencing and steps forward. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Bobby run off after Sam’s assailant -- one of Azazel’s “special children”, manipulated into a desperate situation and pointed at Sam like a weapon, intended to groom him for ruthlessness. Dean’s grief is so acute that Castiel is nearly choking on it. He kneels in the mud at Dean’s side as Dean repeats, “No no no no no…”

“Dean!” Castiel yells directly into his ear. It’s uncomfortable -- it feels cruel, yelling at Dean like this when he’s so distraught, but it’s necessary. “DEAN. This isn’t real. This has all already happened. It’s a djinn. _Wake up._ ”

But Dean’s too mired in his grief for Castiel to break through, as he relives the sensation of Sam’s body cooling in his arms. Dean screams his brother’s name as the memory flickers and changes, and once again they are going back.

\---

To Castiel’s dismay, the memories seem to be moving even faster now. He’s concerned that, even though he’d been unsuccessful at making _Dean_ aware of his presence, the djinn may now be on to him, and is perhaps doubling its efforts to finish its meal.

He goes careening back through memories of hunting with Sam and Bobby -- the memories slow at the death of John Winchester but don’t truly stop -- and further back, through memories of Dean hunting with Sam, and then a long stretch -- or what Castiel thinks is a long stretch -- of Dean hunting alone.

When the flicking through memories finally slows to a stop again, Dean’s sitting in a dive bar next to an older man, talking, leaning in to be heard over the loud music. The man is probably in his late fifties, older than Dean’s father would have been, though Castiel has no doubt that’s how Dean knows him. The man is wearing a flannel shirt in the plaid pattern that’s seemingly preferred by hunters, and his nose is misshapen, like it had been broken more than once, and each time it healed a little worse. They’re comparing notes on ghosts they’ve torched, falling silent when the bartender passes by, close enough to maybe hear them.

This, Castiel thinks, is good. This appears to be a less emotionally charged memory, so Castiel may have an easier time breaking through. He perches on the empty stool to Dean’s right. It’s a little awkward, since he can’t actually move it.

“Dean,” Castiel says, insistently, but more calmly than before, raising his voice just enough to be heard over the music. “This isn’t right. You must feel that this isn’t right. Dean, it’s a djinn. A _djinn_.”

Dean’s unmoved, or so Castiel thinks, until he asks the hunter next to him, “You ever run into a djinn?”

The image of the man wavers. Ripples, almost. Cas feels hope tugging at his heart. Dean hadn’t asked this question before, so he can’t remember how the man had reacted. The memory is going off track.

The man solidifies again, his momentary glitch having gone unnoticed by Dean, and says, “Djinn aren’t real. They’re fairy tales.” There’s a vacant quality to his voice, though. _That_ would be the djinn.

Maybe Castiel’s been going about this all wrong… he knows firsthand, how stubborn Dean can be. Maybe he needs to do less shouting and more convincing. “How does he know they’re not real?” Castiel suggests.

“How do you know?” Dean parrots. “My father thinks they’re real. He wrote about them in his journal.” He sways a little in his seat as the amount of whiskey in his glass slowly decreases.

Castiel himself feels oddly relaxed and loose-limbed, considering the dire circumstances… second-hand drunkenness, he realizes. Wonderful.

“Dean, _this isn’t right_ ,” Castiel insists. And that statement seems to penetrate, but not for the reason Castiel wants it to. 

“I’m not… I’m not feeling so great... “ Dean lists on his stool. “Does whiskey go bad?” And suddenly Dean, who was talking so confidently just minutes ago about torching bodies, looks incredibly young.

From across the bar, the bartender sees Dean turn green and wanders over. “He gonna boot?” he asks.

“He’s fine,” Dean’s companion says, patting Dean on the shoulder. “Just had a little too much to drink. I’ll take him home.”

Castiel feels the first threads of distrust beginning to emanate from Dean, but Dean lets the man lead him out the door to the gravel parking lot, Castiel trailing unseen behind them. As soon as they’re away from the door, Dean frees his elbow. “Thanks, I got -- ” he swallows, thickly, trying to steady himself now that he’s standing unsupported -- “I got it from here.”

He pulls the keys to the Impala from his jacket pocket. The man deftly swipes them away.

“Hey!” Dean protests. He moves to take them back, but the quick movement causes his world to spin. The dizziness is so intense that Castiel feels it too, and has to bend his knees to maintain his balance.

“You’re way too drunk to drive, kid.”

“‘m not driving, gonna sleep… gonna sleep. Gonna sleep in the car. Give it.”

The man jams the keys into his own pocket. “Your daddy’d murder me if he found out I gave you your car keys back in this state. C’mon,” he motions toward a nearby pick-up truck, “I’ll give you a lift back to your motel.”

He takes a few steps, but Dean doesn’t follow. Instead he says, “Dad’ll murder me if anything happens to the car.” The distrust is still there, but Castiel thinks it’s taken a back seat to confusion, and the general effort it takes to remain upright. Dean staggers in place.

The man sighs. “Tell you what,” he says good-naturedly. “How about I drive you back in your car?”

“...Yeah okay,” Dean says. He makes it over to the passenger side of the Impala, stopping twice to lean on the hood and regain his balance. He has to wait for the man to lean over to the passenger side and unlock the door for him. Due to the dream-rules Castiel is beholden to, he can’t follow them into the car, even though he tries. The back doors remain locked, and the handle to Dean’s door, despite feeling solid beneath his fingers, won’t respond to his pulling, so Castiel is forced to watch through the glass as Dean loses his battle with consciousness, slumping with his head against the window. The feeling of secondhand confusion ebbs for Castiel -- he’s no longer competing with Dean’s sensations, and is alone with his own. The man in the driver’s seat decides to drop the pretenses and openly leers at Dean’s unconscious form.

Castiel isn’t sure why the memory persists. Maybe Dean isn’t as unconscious as he seems. Or, more likely, he’s filled in the blanks from the time he was out. 

Castiel slams his hand on the window ineffectually. “Dean, wake up!” he yells. He’s not entirely sure if he’s yelling for him to wake up in the context of the dream, or in general. He has a feeling he knows the nature of what’s about to happen, and he’d settle for just making it stop.

The man reaches over, waves his hand in front of Dean’s face to make sure he’s truly out. He is. Then he eases his palm down the front of Dean’s black t-shirt, smoothing it as he goes, dipping the tips of his fingers just below the waistline of Dean’s jeans before withdrawing them in order to manipulate the button of his fly.

Castiel feels rage bubble up in him, white hot. He can’t lose focus. This man who hurt Dean, did so a long time ago. It’s the djinn that’s hurting him now. Getting him to wake up is the best way to avoid him having to relive this. Castiel slams his hand against the window -- he feels the impact in his palm, but it has no other effect -- no sound, no reverberation of the glass. He cups his hand around his mouth and screams “Dean!” against the glass. His breath leaves no fog. “DEAN!”

The man, having successfully undone Dean’s fly, wriggles his hand down the front of his jeans, cupping him.

Castiel knows the moment Dean wakes back up, because the secondhand fear and confusion washes over him as if he’d been plunged into ice.

A beat passes before Dean whips himself forward, forehead cracking against the man’s poorly-healed nose.

“SON OFFABIH,” he screams, clutching his face.

“GET OUT!” Dean roars. He grabs at his pant leg, where Castiel suspects he has a knife stashed, but his movements are fumbling and uncoordinated. “OUT.”

“Shut up,” the man responds, clamping his hand against Dean’s mouth hard enough to rock his head back. Castiel feels everything go fuzzy for a second, while Dean reorients himself. 

He can see that Dean now has a grip on the knife. He bites the man’s hand, hard, and it’s jerked away from his face.

“Out, now. I mean it,” Dean says. His speech is a little clearer, adrenaline temporarily cutting through the inebriated haze.

This isn’t happening now, Castiel reminds himself again. Knowing that does _nothing_ , to keep his heart from breaking. This isn’t happening now. He just needs Dean to wake up. “DEAN,” he calls again. He doesn’t know what to say. What can he possibly say?

The man, angry now, puts both hands to Dean’s chest and, throwing his weight behind them, moves to straddle him. 

As soon as the man’s leg is halfway over his body, Dean stabs him in the thigh. The man howls.

“Get out,” Dean says, clipped and clear even though Castiel can feel how he’s struggling to remain awake. “GET. OUT.”

The man retreats back to the driver’s seat. Dean tries to keep his grasp on the knife, but it’s embedded in the man’s leg and slips from his grip. “You stupid shit,” the man spits. His nose is running blood into his mouth. “Twinky, dumbfuck piece of ass. What the fuck did you think you were meeting me for?”

Dean’s first punch goes wide and hits the man in the uninjured thigh. He adjusts his aim and punches again, harder, hitting him squarely between the legs “OUT!”

The man slides halfway out of the driver’s seat in order to vomit out the door. Dean draws his legs up, using both of them to kick the man as hard as he can, pushing him further out the door. Dean’s consciousness grays out for a moment, and Castiel hears the faintest whisp of prayer “awake, please please please, stay awake stay awake” before Dean gathers himself enough to slide over behind the steering wheel, pushing the dry-heaving man out the rest of the way. “If I ever see you again,” he slurs, “I’ll kill you. And if my dad sees you, he’ll fucking skin you.”

Castiel recognizes the bluff. There’s no way Dean is ever telling John about this. 

With the man out of the car, Dean throws it into neutral. “Pleaseont lemmecrash,” he mutters, prays, as the car ambles forward, onto the grass, and stops. Not far enough. Dean shifts it into gear, gives it a little gas, and when it’s on the other side of the dumpster, mostly hidden by hidden by the back of the building, he tosses it into park and lets himself sag, driver’s side door still open.

Castiel’s halfway around the car when a new feeling hits. Dean, clinging to consciousness, no longer afraid. Not even really angry. He’s _lonely_. The feeling crashes over Castiel like a wave, so strong that it’s nearly physical. With the driver’s side door still open, he’s able to lean over Dean. Dean’s eyes are closed, but he knows he’s not asleep; the memory hasn’t ended yet, and Castiel can feel the sadness radiating off him.

“Dean,” he says. “Dean, you’re not alone. I’m here. I’m with you.“ He takes in Dean’s glazed, watery eyes and the expression of abject misery on his face, an expression Cas is sure he wouldn’t allow himself if he hadn’t thought he was alone. “We’re both in a barn, in Kansas. I need you to remember. Sam’s there, too.” Or at least he should be, by now, he hopes. “Please, Dean. I need you to wake up.”

And Dean… doesn’t wake up, not in the way that Castiel’s begging him to, but his eyes do open. And they focus -- they focus blearily on Castiel, on his face.

“You see me,” Castiel says.

Dean’s eyes roll back in his head. The scene changes.

\---

There’s a flickering, much shorter this time. Castiel catches glimpses of Dean hunting with his father -- the previous scene, the assault, must have taken place shortly after they parted ways -- before it grinds to a halt in a bedroom. 

Castiel takes one look at the scene in front of him and feels his face heat up.

Dean -- who is probably in his early twenties, if not late teens -- is kneeling on a dark green bedspread, hands tied loosely behind his back. Castiel’s sure he could easily free himself if he wanted to. He’s wearing nothing but a small, lacy pair of pink undergarments. He’s pale on the parts of his body usually covered by his shirt, and even paler on the parts usually covered by his pants. The freckles on his shoulders stand out.

“You’re not getting shy on me, are you, Dean?” a voice asks from somewhere behind Castiel.

A step to the side reveals a woman -- short, curvaceous and, Castiel notices in the split second before he looks back to Dean -- wearing only a black pair of the same underwear Dean’s wearing.

Dean shifts his weight from knee to knee on the unsteady surface of the bed, drawing Castiel’s eyes down. Dean is clearly very aroused.

Castiel feels his face heat up even more. He looks at the floor, thinks better of it, and looks at Dean’s face instead. _Only_ his face.

“Shy? Me? I don’t really do shy,” Dean says. It doesn’t sound particularly convincing, though. The words are right, but they lack the usual bravado.

The springs of the mattress creak as the woman joins Dean on the bed.

Castiel is being foolish. He’s millennia old, he’s seen humans copulate before, and Dean’s survival depends on Castiel getting through to him. Whatever strange, unsettled thing it is that Castiel is feeling in the pit of his stomach, Dean’s memories have been depleted down to his first two decades -- that’s nearly half his life gone. Castiel has to get through to him, and soon. If he’s unable to get Dean to listen to him before he regresses back to childhood, his chances of rescue drop dramatically. At that point, there’s a good chance that, even if Castiel is able to communicate with him, Dean won’t understand what Castiel is trying to tell him, or he’ll write Castiel off as some kind of imaginary friend. 

Not that Castiel will stop trying. He will _never_ stop trying.

Eavesdropping on this memory feels like a bigger violation than what Castiel had seen previously, but he’s not sure that makes sense. Castiel knows the degree to which Dean tries to appear unaffected, so logic should dictate he’d be more upset by Castiel seeing the assault in the bar parking lot than this consensual encounter.

Castiel moves forward without taking his eyes off Dean’s face, until his knees meet the corner of the bed. Only then does he look down in order to kneel -- it’s solid to him, unyielding despite its apparent plushness, so unlike Dean, he doesn’t have shift his weight around to maintain balance.

He can hear the suck-smack noise of enthusiastic kissing. Someone moans, he’s not sure who.

He has to continue trying to get Dean’s attention. He forces himself to look up. At Dean, hands still tied, wearing the lacy underwear and allowing his partner to guide him into spreading his thighs wider so that she can slot one of her legs between his. 

This time the moaning is definitely Dean. It strikes Castiel that the consensual nature might be exactly why his presence in this memory feels more intrusive… In this moment Dean’s vulnerable because he wants to be. Nothing’s being taken from him -- he had to make the decision to give it, and continue giving it.

“Who are you?” Dean asks, jarring Castiel out of his introspection. He’s looking at Castiel, directly at Castiel, while the woman kisses his neck.

He wants to answer, “Castiel,” but something about this reminds him so viscerally of their first meeting that he instinctively answers, “I’m an angel of the Lord.”

Dean lets go of the mostly naked memory woman, and shifts away from her a bit so he’s facing Castiel more directly. Castiel notices that her features have become indistinct, details lost in the wake of Dean’s inattention. She nevertheless continues to cling and kiss Dean’s neck. 

“There’s no such thing as angels,” Dean says absently. He doesn’t seem alarmed by Castiel’s presence, which is good. Castiel hopes it means that, even though Dean doesn’t recognize him specifically, he somehow feels he’s familiar.

“There are such things as angels. I’m an angel.” He pauses a moment and then adds, “I’m _your_ angel,” with as much feeling as he can throw behind it.

Unfortunately for him, Dean’s partner chooses that exact moment to do something especially good with her mouth to the juncture of Dean’s jaw and neck, dragging his attention away. He recaptures the woman’s mouth, kissing her enthusiastically.

“ _Dean_ ,” Castiel insists. “Please. I need you to snap out of it. I need you to listen to me.”

The kissing continues unabated. 

“Dean,” Castiel tries again, earnestly shuffling closer. “I need you to look at me, and I need you to really see me, because if you don’t, you’ll-- ”

Dean shifts without warning, pulling his hands free from their flimsy restraints and angling away from the woman. In one fluid motion, he has Cas’s tie wrapped around his hand and is using it to pull him forward and jam their mouths together.

Cas stiffens, even as heat flashes through him. He knows Dean’s half trapped in this memory, and not entirely aware of what he’s doing. Cas’s mouth is closed, teeth being mashed uncomfortably against the insides of his lips. Dean’s mouth is open, and moving. The whole experience is very wet. Castiel puts his hands on Dean’s shoulders, and this time he connects, fingers indenting Dean’s skin. Dean’s attention is fully on him now. He pushes Dean away gently, but firmly, ignoring the inexplicable heat surging through him (stolen heat -- this isn’t his memory, he doesn’t belong in it, and he needs to pull Dean _out_ ). Their lips part.

“Dean,” Castiel says, quieter. “Please wake up. If you wake up, I’m there. I’m waiting for you there.” 

“Want you here,” Dean says, and tries to kiss him again, but Castiel’s grip on Dean’s shoulders stays firm. 

It’s not so much a rejection as a _not now_ , and definitely not like this.

“Wake up, Dean, you know this isn’t right. Neither of us are really here.”

The woman, whom Castiel had forgotten for the moment because the less Dean paid attention to her, the more blurry and unreal she seemed, suddenly snaps back into focus.

She pulls Dean away from Cas sharply, and he loses his balance, toppling onto his side.

When she turns to Castiel, he has just enough time to register that her eyes are a startling shade of blue, before she backhands him with unbelievable strength. 

It’s because her eyes are not her eyes.

He grabs it -- the djinn -- by the wrist. He doesn’t know what effect trying to smite it in Dean’s mindscape would have -- not a good one, he suspects -- but even so, he lashes out, hoping to weaken it. He thinks he manages to hurt it, wrenching its arm back much too hard and much too far in the instant before it pulls itself away, and then the scene’s changing again.

\---

They skid to a halt and Castiel sees Dean hitchhiking along an empty stretch of road. He’s got a bag of groceries in one hand and an antiquated cell phone in the other. “Sorry, Sammy. You know me. Can never say no to a pretty girl in distress. You should have seen the legs on her --”

The exhausted look on Dean’s face leads Castiel to believe he’s lying, but he’s not waiting around to find out. He rushes forward once again, hand outstretched to grasp Dean’s shoulder, but in the instant before he would have made contact, he finds himself once more wrenched away.

\---

There’s some of the telltale flickering that had accompanied the djinn feeding on Dean’s memories before, but not nearly as much of it. Far less than there’d been between the previous two memories.

The movement ceases, and Castiel is standing in a field. It’s warm, but Dean’s wearing his leather jacket, and Sam’s in a sweatshirt. Cas has long since realized that the layers of clothing the Winchesters tend to wear, protect them from more than just the elements.

Dean is young, and Sam’s not just young but _small_ , and clutching a box of incendiaries. “Come on, let’s go,” he says, walking ahead of Dean into the starlit field. 

But that’s as far as the memory gets before Dean whips around to Castiel and demands, “Who _are_ you?”

Castiel, caught off guard, resists the urge to take a step backward. “Castiel,” he says. Behind Dean, the memory of Sam smudges at the edges as he’s momentarily forgotten. “I’m an angel. Your friend.”

Dean scoffs. “I don’t know you, _friend_. And there’s no such thing as angels.”

“There is. You know there is. Because you’re not really here. This,” he waves his hand, gesturing at the scenery. “This isn’t really happening, not right now. You’re remembering something that happened years ago.”

Dean looks highly skeptical. He looks back at Sam, who sharpens some under his gaze, but still doesn’t look entirely real. Dean’s left the script of the original memory, and Castiel’s managed to sew some doubt. It all seems a little less convincing to Castiel. But maybe Dean wants to be convinced, because after taking in his grinning brother clutching his box of explosives, he turns back to Castiel. “You should go.”

Castiel’s running out of time. He thinks he injured the djinn, but it could be back at any instant. “If you don’t come with me, you’ll die.”

Dean’s eyes narrow sharply. “That sounds like a threat.”

“ _I’m_ not the one threatening you. Have you ever heard of a djinn?”

“What, like, gives you three wishes?”

“Not exactly. Djinn just make you believe you’ve been granted a wish. They fabricate an elaborate dream for you while they drain your life.”

“This isn’t a dream,” Dean says, uncertain. With his attention so focused on Castiel the field, too, has begun to blur. 

“No, it’s not a dream. It’s a memory. This djinn is devouring your memories, and when it’s eaten them all, it will either kill you, or leave you a drooling vegetable in the care of your brother. Do you want that?”

“You’re crazy,” Dean says, but he sounds skeptical. “My brother’s right--”

He turns. In the absence of his attention, the scene around them has blurred like a watercolor painting, leaving Sam nothing but a vaguely human-shaped smudge of colors. Now not even Dean can pretend it’s all right. “Sam?” he asks.

“Sam’s waiting for you back in the real world,” Castiel says gently. “So am I.”

“Yeah,” Dean says. Castiel can hear the fear in his voice. He’s so young here. Castiel holds his hand out to him.

In the moment Dean moves to take Castiel’s hand, everything around them becomes suddenly sharp. Dean is wrenched away from Castiel and thrown to the ground. 

Sam is standing there, solid and feral-looking, eyes glowing blue. “You’re ruining the best meal I’ve ever had,” it whines. Between the way it speaks and moves, it looks nothing like Sam, even though it’s wearing his form. “Fuck you for making me rush my dinner.”

It moves lightning fast, spreading its hand possessively over Dean’s face. Dean shouts and tries to pull the thing away by its wrist, to no effect.

Castiel pitches himself forward and at the same time the djinn tries to pull Dean back again, Castiel grabs a hold of him and yells, “Wake up!”

They wake up.

\----

Sam, leaning uneasily against an old horse stall that he doesn’t actually dare put his entire weight on (the constant threat of potentially falling over is incentive to stay awake), isn’t sure what he’s expecting to happen or when, so he’s trying to be ready for anything at any time.

He’s definitely _not_ expecting the eruption of blue smoke and lightning-bright angel grace that comes pouring out of his brother’s mouth in an angrily flashing plume, twisting in the air in a battle that’s impossible for human eyes to accurately follow.

Sam has a bad feeling about this. He squeezes his eyes shut just before the light _erupts_ , so bright it hurts even through his eyelids.

When he opens them again, Castiel is coughing this awful, wet-sounding cough, slumped over a still-unconscious Dean.

The djinn, trussed up across the room and mostly healed, doesn’t wake.

“Cas?” Sam asks.

Cas coughs a little more, but manages to choke out, “I’m all right.”

Sam’s a little doubtful of that. “Dean?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Cas says, pinched-sounding as he tries to get the hacking under control.

Sam’s stomach drops, but he tries not to let it show on his face. It probably does anyway. “And him?” he asks, gesturing at the djinn.

Castiel makes a ‘go ahead’ gesture with his hand.

Sam nods, and picks up his silver knife and jar of mostly-cooled lamb’s blood. This part, at least, goes exactly as expected.

\---

 

The first thing Dean’s aware of when he wakes is his absolutely pounding headache. The second is that he seems to be lying on hard-packed dirt. And the third is that he’s not alone.

He opens his eyes and sees Cas looking down at him in concern before the light makes him wince and close his eyes again.

Two fingertips touch his forehead. The headache eases, but doesn’t entirely go away.

“Where were you the last time I had a hangover?” Dean asks.

“This isn’t a hangover,” Castiel says, frown apparent in his voice. “Do you remember what happened?”

It’s amazingly good to hear Castiel’s voice. It feels like it’s been much longer than the couple of weeks since they’d last seen each other, and yet somehow like it’s been no time at all. Dean feels exhausted, but strangely amped, like he’s coming down from a fight. And drained… even more so than usual. He thinks back, but his memories dart away from him like minnows in a pond. “No… yes. Sam and I were investigating… people. People falling into comas. Mostly older, all… special. A spy, an astronaut, a wartime nurse…” He feels scattered and he officially doesn’t fucking like it. “What happened?”

“It was a djinn,” Castiel tells him. “One that eats memories. He was going after people who’d lived a long time, and who had unique life experiences.”

Dean just stares at him for a second. “I must have been a fucking delicacy.”

Castiel smiles at him, just a little. Dean doesn’t bask in it. “He seemed to think so. I… I had to go in and wake you up, in order to expel him.”

The hesitation puts Dean on high alert. Cas feels guilty about something. He decides to sit up. He feels weak, and his stomach lodges a complaint about the upward movement, but Cas scoots back to give Dean room to bend his legs. “What do you mean, ‘go in’?” he asks.

“The djinn was dragging you back through your memories, devouring them as you re-experienced them. I went with you, trying to make you aware of the fact you were dreaming so that you could expel him.”

Dean frowns. He doesn’t remember. “What did you see?”

Castiel hesitates. “It wasn’t my intention to violate your privacy. Your life was in danger.”

Well. That doesn’t sound suspicious. “What did you see?” he asks again, more firmly.

Castiel sighs, but evidently feels that Dean has a right to know. “I saw… Hell. Quite a bit of Hell, but mostly in flashes. I saw… I saw you say yes to Alastair.”

Dean doesn’t flinch, but only because he’d prepared himself not to. “What else?”

“Um. I saw. I saw Sam dying. Before you made the deal to bring him back. I saw… I saw what happened to you, that one time, in the parking lot of a bar.”

Okay, now Dean does flinch. He doesn’t like thinking about that night, does his best not to. He realizes that he doesn’t even remember the name of his dad’s hunting buddy who he met that night, but he’ll never forget the feel of his calloused hands on his junk.

“I’m sorry.”

Dean waves his hand. He feels exposed, kind of raw, and a little guilty, though he’s not sure why. “Keep going.”

“Um. That’s where you noticed me for the first time, but I believe you thought you were hallucinating. And then a, um… an encounter with a young woman.”

“You really have to be more specific.”

“You were wearing matching undergarments.”

Dean blinks. Oh, God. Rhonda.

He frowns. He remembers that.

But, really. He _remembers_ that.

He remembers… he remembers the hot, sweaty, possibly illegal in some states sex he had with Rhonda, but then he remembers something else... almost like some kind of transparent overlay, a second set of memories, a man with blue eyes in a suit -- he remembers grabbing his tie, pulling him forward --

Oh god. His face is red. He can feel it. Fuck. 

Cas is looking at him curiously. “Dean?” 

Dean clears his throat. “Nothing. It’s nothing. Continue.”

“So… I’m, um, fairly positive that you noticed me in that memory, but I wasn’t able to make you realize you weren’t really there. Also, that’s when the djinn became aware of me.”

Dean maintains eye contact, gaze steady, trying not to visibly react. “And then?”

“And then I saw you in a field, with your brother. He was holding fireworks. Your awareness of my presence luckily followed you to the next memory. We had an… altercation with the djinn, and I was able to wake you up.”

Dean nods. He should thank Cas. He’s glad he’s alive. He’d have done the same thing, given the circumstances. But he’s not sure he can really talk right now. Something inside him feels like it’s been peeled, exposing everything that comprises him. Castiel has seen his architecture, and even though he hasn’t run away, Dean’s still finding the experience unpleasant.

Cas nods back, slowly, and gives Dean his space.

\---

He wants to ask Castiel to stay, but can’t seem to bring himself to, so of course Cas doesn’t. Unlike the days of Cas suddenly disappearing, Dean hears his footsteps shushing through the dry grass as he walks away.

Dean lets himself space out, alone by the road, watching the horizon and waiting for Sam to finish disposing of the djinn. Eventually, Dean hears him approach, but doesn’t turn around. He just keeps squinting off into the hazy sunrise. It’s gonna be a hot one.

“Where’d Cas go?” Sam asks. 

Dean shrugs. “Off to wherever it is he goes when he’s not with us.”

“Is that a good idea? He looked… pretty exhausted after whatever he did in you.” 

Dean makes a disgusted noise. “Dude, rephrase. And Cas is a big boy. He can take care of himself.”

He can tell without actually looking, that Sam’s unimpressed. “Well… djinn’s torched… You ready to go?”

Dean nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

\----

Castiel drives away from the farmhouse, but he doesn’t get very far before exhaustion forces him to pull over. His borrowed grace feels dim and unwieldy, like a dying star that’s slowly expanding and soon he won’t be able to contain. He pulls over beside a corn field and, making sure the doors are locked, quickly falls into a deep and dreamless sleep.

\----

 

Dean doesn’t even realize how thirsty he is until Sam presses a bottle of water into his hand. He drains the whole thing without taking a breath. Sam gives him another one, with the order of, “Slower.”

“Bossy,” Dean accuses, but does as he’s told. 

Really, Sam and Dean have been through so much traumatizing shit together that there’s an actual pattern to the day after, and it looks like Sam is sticking to the script, because after almost an hour of leaving Dean to his thoughts, he starts with, “You know, if you want to talk about it…”

Dean snorts. He never ever wants to talk about it.

“Dean--”

“I know Cas did what he had to. I know he saved my life. I also know that I didn’t want him screwing around,” he taps his temple, “up here.”

Sam’s silent at that. Obnoxiously, conspicuously silent. 

“What?” Dean snaps.

“Just… remember when Castiel ate a bunch of souls and decided he was God?”

Oh yeah, because that was an experience Dean was likely to forget. “I dimly recall.”

“...and remember when he dragged you out of Hell?”

“Some of our greatest hits.” Dean clunks the right side of his forehead against the cool glass of the passenger’s side window. He’s not exactly sure how those two shitty events relate.“What’s your point?”

“My point is that Cas has already seen you at your worst. And you’ve seen him at his, and you haven’t scared each other off yet. What are you actually afraid of?”

There’s a subtext to this conversation that Dean’s not particularly enjoying. “Shut up,” he says.

Sam shuts up.

And he stays shut up, which gives Dean time to think and fume. Who the fuck does Sam think he is, armchair psyching him anyway? And maybe he shouldn’t, but he feels the need to explain…. “It’s not that he saw me at my worst. He just… broke through to me, finally, at a kind of awkward time. Like, sexy awkward.” After a moment of silence, a glance to his left reveals Sam to be frowning at the road in front of him. “Don’t get me wrong. I stand by my performance in that memory 100%, but it’s not the kind of thing a guy exactly wants an audience for.”

“Huh,” Sam says. “An audience for. Right.” He’s quiet for a second, but Dean knows it’s not going to last. Sure enough, he starts up again with, “Cas was in there a while. With you. I, um…” Sam looks incredibly guilty when he says, “Cas said that the first time he looked in on you, it was the first time you’d met. Which means you’d traveled back about five years in two hours. I was actually… I was starting to panic a little, because you’d been out so long I thought you’d be back in diapers before Cas got you back, that you’d be lost entirely. But I’d forgotten about your time in Hell. I’m sorry I forgot,” he says, and he sounds so guilty that Dean kinda wants to hit him. 

“Don’t worry about it,” Dean says. He even means it, though he doubts Sam will take it to heart.

“Yeah. So, anyway. Cas was with you awhile… which means you would have been pretty far back by the time you got to the memory where he broke through to you… And Cas said the djinn target memories that were transformative… memories that left an impression.”

“Oh, she left an impression,” Dean assures him. He isn’t lying, but the accompanying leer is half-hearted at best. “What’s your point?”

“My point is… even though you were reliving the memories of twenty…?” he peers at Dean for verification, but Dean doesn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing how close his estimate is “... year-old you. You’re, you know. _Re_ living them. You’re not twenty anymore.”

“I don’t follow.”

“I’m just saying. This… _transformative_ experience you had when you were younger -- and please, I don’t want details --”

“Good, you’re not getting any.” As much as Dean appreciates the art of the well-timed overshare, he thinks he’ll keep his little foray into lacy underthings to himself. 

“It’s just, that… in your head, even though it seemed like things were happening in real time when you were that age, you were actually now-you remembering the experiences of then-you? And the things that…” Sam waves a hand around, uncomfortably searching for an appropriate phrase, ”got you going then, might not be what you’re into now. It makes sense that after so much time, your needs would change.”

“Yeah? And what do I need now, Dr. Phil?”

Sam shoots him a look like he’s being particularly dense before training his eyes back on the road. “Don’t ask me,” he says finally.

There’s more silence, minutes of it, before Sam evidently decides he’s not quite done. “I’m just saying, that if you were remembering feeling a certain way then, and then were presented with, uh, something that could potentially make you feel that same certain way _now_ \--”

“Stop talking,” Dean snaps.

Sam, probably realizing that he’s pushed as far as he can before the conversation warps into an argument, stops talking.

And Dean’s not looking to fight right now, even though part of him wants to. He’s angry a lot these days, but he was angry before. He doesn’t actually know how much of this anger, the desire to argue, is his own contrary nature, and how much of it is something darker. How much of it is the Mark.

Cas. The elephant in the room, the nameless need that Sam just barely refrained from explicitly naming. Dean knows. He feels it. He doesn’t particularly want to poke at those feelings, but at this point he doesn’t know if he has a choice. It’s become too much to be ignored.

He remembers Cas in Rhonda’s bedroom. He’d appeared suddenly, but it felt like he belonged there. It felt right. The _heat_ that he’d felt, felt right. He remembers jerking Cas forward by his trench coat and -- 

It felt good. Natural. Even if he hadn’t remembered Cas at the time, he’d _known_ him. More than he’d known Rhonda… he hadn’t known Rhonda at all, really. They’d both been young and sexually adventurous, and kind of new to the things they’d been doing, which creates its own kind of bond, but… Dean’s not that kid anymore. Not even a little. He’s not sure when the memory of that night with her had been shuffled out of his mental spank bank, and into wherever it was he kept the memories that make him feel fond and wistful. His tendency to hook up has slowed down in recent years, anonymous one-nighters not being as satisfying as they used to be. Diminishing returns and all that. 

Dean sighs. Change is the price of getting old, he guesses. Maybe it doesn’t have to be all bad, but experience dictates it probably will be. He wishes Cas were here, wishes it so badly his ribcage aches. He never should have let him drive away. His phone buzzes in his pocket. “Hello?”

On the other end, Castiel sounds wrecked. “You’re praying to me again. I’m calling because I can’t hear you clearly.”

“I didn’t mean to.” Well, that’s embarrassing. “You sound terrible. Where are you?”

“I’m fine, Dean. I just heard you calling to me. Are you okay?”

“I’m okay. It’s was just, like... a mental butt dial. Where are you?”

Castiel sounds mildly exasperated when he says. “Route 36, past Atwood.”

“So, just a couple miles from where we last saw you?”

“Dean --”

“Stay put, we’re on our way.” He hangs up before Castiel can say anything else.

Sam, who’d been keeping his eyes steadfastly on the road throughout the exchange, glances over. “We turning around?”

“We’re turning around.”

\---

Castiel wakes when Dean raps his knuckles on the driver’s side window. He groggily reaches up to unlock the door. Dean’s face suddenly looming large in his line of vision, as he presses a hand against Castiel’s sweaty forehead. “He looks awful,” he hears Sam mutter from somewhere behind Dean.

“I’m fine,” Castiel rasps. “I just overexerted myself.”

“You don’t say,” Dean snaps, and then seems to get a better handle on himself. “I shouldn’t have let you leave.”

“You didn’t let me anything,” Castiel bites back. Dean’s pulling him out of the driver’s seat, and he has no choice but to go with him. It’s not like he’s in much condition to resist. The sudden movement from sitting to standing makes all the blood rush away from his head and the world goes gray. His knees buckle beneath him. He hears Dean say, “Whoa!” and everything lists sideways as Dean struggles to keep him upright. Cas is dimly aware of being rescued from the ground by another set of hands, and then things are moving, and by the time he orients himself again he’s being lowered into the passenger seat of the Impala. He wants to tell them he’s just lightheaded, he’s better than he looks really, but he can’t seem to get a word in edgewise between the Winchesters who are literally talking over him, and he can’t even focus enough to interrupt.

“... sure you’re okay to drive?”

“Fine, just tired.... 10 miles back, red awning, nicer than our usual but…”

“I saw it. Okay, but if… any reason pull over, Dean, I mean it… can get the Continental later...”

Castiel loses his grip on the words, slipping away from them and under them to somewhere dark and quiet. He hopes he’s not dying -- not yet -- and that’s the last thought he has for a little while.

\---

Castiel jerks awake. It sets off a small chain reaction as the body beside him on the bed also jerks awake. “You okay?” Dean asks, voice muddled and sleep-thick.

He does a quick inventory of himself. Every part of him aches. He’s still exhausted, but he always is these days. The inside of his head is beating like a drum. “I’m okay,” he confirms. 

Dean rolls over so he can look at him. The streetlight, filtered through the blinds of what Castiel can only assume is a motel room (with, he recalls, a red awning, “nicer than usual”) throws Dean’s features into stark relief, making the angles sharper and the lines around his eyes deeper. Castiel thinks, not for the first time, that he’s beautiful. He just wishes he weren’t so tired. He doesn’t say either of those things, because neither would be welcome.

“You scared me,” Dean says softly. 

“I’m sorry,” Castiel says.

“No, that’s not -- ” Dean starts, before taking a deep breath and trying again. “I’m not fishing for an apology. I just want to know why you didn’t tell us you were in that bad a shape?”

Castiel blinks. He’s been “in that bad a shape” for weeks. It’s only the added exertion of digging through Dean’s head and fighting the djinn that’s laid him so low.

“It’s the grace, isn’t it? Your borrowed grace? What happens when it runs out?”

He dies. When it runs out, he dies. He takes too long answering, which is evidently answer enough.

“Is there a way to fix it?” Dean asks. He’s still on his elbow, only a couple feet away. 

“Getting my own grace back,” Castiel replies. His voice is a frog’s croak, ”or more stolen grace. But that’s a stopgap, and I won’t be a vampire of my own kind.”

Dean twists away, picking something up off the nightstand and returning with it. It’s a fast food cup. He positions the straw at Castiel’s lips. Castiel almost protests, tells Dean that he doesn’t require it, but ultimately he takes the path of least resistance and sucks dutifully. It tastes like melted ice and the dim memory of soda, with an unpleasant underflavor of cardboard. It’s helpful, which is worrisome. The decaying grace inside him is no longer automatically taking care of his vessel’s less convenient functions if he’s craving hydration. He hopes this doesn’t mean he’ll begin needing to urinate again. He hates urinating. 

Dean puts the cup back and then returns to prop himself up on his elbow. “Can you take the grace out? Be human again?”

Now Castiel just wishes he’d leave him alone. His eyelids are beginning to droop. “Then I wouldn’t be able to help you anymore. I wouldn’t be useful.”

Dean blinks down at him in disbelief. “You don’t have to be useful. You just have to be alive.”

“Sam only called me yesterday because he knew I could help.” Castiel’s eyes are trying to close on him. “Helping makes me… relevant still.”

“Relevant--” Dean starts, angry and a little too loud. He stops himself, either for Castiel’s sake, or Sam’s sake, as Cas guesses he’s sleeping in the other bed--Castiel isn’t sure, and starts again. “You always mean something. To me, you mean something. I won’t lose you.”

And I won’t lose myself, Castiel thinks. His memories of his time as a human aren’t overly fond. He spent most of it dirty and hungry, both physically alone and alone in his head. Even when things got a little better, when he was employed at the Gas ‘n’ Sip, he lived in constant fear of what little security he’d found slipping through his grasp. Dying from depleted grace couldn’t possibly be worse than a perpetual almost-life as a human, one where Dean wouldn’t forget him, exactly, but he’d stay away because Dean’s life is complicated and Castiel would be breakable. Helplessness, he thinks, is even worse than frequent urination. He’s not sure how to articulate all this to Dean, though, or if he even wants to.

After a moment of rather awkward silence during which Castiel both contemplates the futility of speech and struggles to keep his eyes open, Dean says, “Go back to sleep. We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Released from his obligation to reply, Castiel does exactly that.

\---

Castiel wakes again a few hours later. He’s feeling better, if not necessarily well. He hasn’t felt well in a while now. He’d expected Dean to be up, just by virtue of the fact that Castiel had been asleep for so long, and he’d enjoyed knowing that Dean was asleep next to him, in those brief nearly-waking moments he was actually aware of it. 

Evidently, though, nearly being devoured by a memory-eating djinn is almost as exhausting as doing battle with one. Castiel eases out of the bed carefully, lest he wake Dean with the jostling of the mattress. His coat is draped over the back of one of the two uncomfortable-looking chairs set beside the table where Sam’s laptop rests. His shoes are on the chair also. The rest of Castiel’s clothing seems to be in place on his body, which is good. He trusts Dean, and Sam, to look after him, but he still finds being insensate for so long to be unsettling and finding himself suddenly disrobed wouldn’t help with that feeling. He spares one longing look toward the bathroom, knowing that a shower would feel good right now, but he really doesn’t have time for it if he wants to sneak out successfully.

The thing is, he knows Dean isn’t going to let the topic of Castiel’s health drop, so it’s in both of their best interests that Castiel leaves before the argument starts. The keys to the Continental are on the bedside table, next to the now empty fast food cup. Everything is going according to plan. He’s out the door, scanning the parking lot for his car, when someone clears their throat behind him.

Castiel whips around, dizzying himself. Sam Winchester has his hands on his jogging short- clad hips, a peevish expression on his face. “Going somewhere?”

“No?” Castiel tries. He wishes, desperately and not for the first time, that his wings were operational.

Sam seems to deflate a little. “Listen. If you want to go, obviously I’m not going to stop you, and I know Dean was frustrating you last night--”

“You were listening to us?”

Sam grimaces. “I tried not to. Small room. My point is that, after everything with the memory djinn, or whatever, Dean’s feeling a little raw and it’s easier for him to shower you with attention than to admit that _he_ could use some attention. This… isn’t the best time to go abandoning him.”

Castiel bristles. “I’m not _abandoning_ him.”

Sam shrugs unapologetically. “Running away from him, then.”

Castiel finds himself suddenly quite angry, and though he tries to keep his voice even, he’s pretty sure the sentiment leaks through. “He wants me to… to depower myself because he’ll miss me --”

“He’s --”

Castiel interrupts. “I understand why Dean couldn’t have me around before, but I learned how to be human on my own. I found the entire experience unpleasant, and he needs to understand why this is my decision.”

Sam sighs. “Cas, your little field trip through Dean’s brain knocked you on your ass for a whole day. You’re not exactly running at full speed. You might actually function better graceless than you’re functioning right now, if you gave the grace up. It’s not like we’d have to stop looking for yours, and Dean and I have seen enough of our friends die.”

“This isn’t his decision,” Cas repeats. “Or yours.”

“No. But Dean’s pushing you because he’s worried.”

Castiel deflates. “I’m a better angel, than a human.” He narrows his eyes at the tall, sweaty man in front of him. “I realize you’re using guilt to manipulate me.”

Sam holds his hands up in a gesture of mock innocence. They’re silent for a moment before Sam says, “Stick around?”

Castiel takes a moment. Looks at the keys in his hand, and the Continental parked a few cars away, and back at Sam. Thinks of Dean, asleep in the motel bed. “I’ll stay,” he concedes, reluctantly. “For now.”

Sam smile and pulls his key card out of his shorts pocket. Cas follows him to the door. “You smell unpleasant.”

“You’re not one to talk,” Sam says, as he lets them both inside. “I’d fight you for the shower, but I might actually win.”

Castiel, run down as he is, is still an angel and could easily beat Sam in a physical confrontation. “I’ve no desire to fight you. You can shower first.”

Sam laughs. “Thanks, Cas.”

“You’re welcome.”

\---

Dean rises back to the surface of consciousness slowly. His head throbs and his mouth feels disgusting. The light coming through the motel blinds suggests afternoon rather than morning.

“Hello, Dean,” Castiel says.

Dean twists around. Castiel is sitting on the other bed, back against the headboard, with Sam’s computer open in his lap. “Hey,” Dean says. “You look better.” He does, too. Still kinda worn out maybe, but less like he’s three seconds away from keeling over.

“I feel better.” Castiel closes the laptop. “Sam’s gone to book us another night here, and to get you both food.”

As if on cue, Dean’s stomach lets out a loud growl. He hopes Sam gets real food and none of that leafy shit he likes. Dean’s pretty sure he could eat a horse. He sits up and takes stock. He’s still wearing his clothes from yesterday. He stretches. He’s achy from sleeping so long in the same position, but otherwise he’s feeling okay. Better than he has in a while, actually. 

“You should take a shower,” Castiel suggests. “They help.”

Dean offers him a small smile. “That’s not a bad idea.” A shower is actually a great idea. Both because he smells pretty gnarly and because it’ll give him a chance to figure out what the hell he’s doing. He’s always been kind of aware that… okay, maybe really aware… that Cas is pretty attractive. And if he were forced to admit it, he might confess that, in fantasies he had when he was in the mood for something _different_... the nameless, faceless men he’d always fantasized about had begun to take on some definite Cas-like qualities of late. Even before he and Cas had really become _he and Cas_. Back when Dean had been Michael’s meatsuit-in-waiting and Cas had still been Heaven’s errand boy. Dean’s libido had definitely had… inclinations. 

Dean grabs a change of clothes from his duffel bag. Sam must have brought it in last night, because Dean’s pretty positive he hadn’t. For all he’d insisted he was fine to drive the day before, he’d been stretching the truth a little. He’d barely made it the ten minutes down the road to the motel with his eyes open, and everything that happened after pulling into the parking lot was kind of a blur. Dean keeps his eyes trained on the task at hand, avoiding looking at Castiel even though he wants to. His heart judders a little too fast, and he hopes Cas can’t hear it. He should probably shave, but he’s not feeling particularly motivated. Maybe he’ll rock the scruff for a day or two. 

For all Dean intends to spend his shower formulating a plan of attack with regard to Operation Convince Cas To Save Himself, as soon as he the hot water starts to pound down on his back he completely spaces out. There’s a hypnotic quality to it, and the relief he feels as it washes away two days of grime and stress is indescribable. He dozes off at one point, waking up when his legs begin to buckle underneath him. That’s when he decides he’s probably had enough and quickly extracts himself.

He still has no idea what he’s going to do about Cas. 

Be honest, he guesses. Honesty is the best policy. He snorts. It’s not exactly the Winchester motto. It’s more like the anti-motto. The negamotto. 

Cas is still there, still sitting at the small table where Dean had left him. That’s a good start.

No time like the present. “So,” Dean starts.

Anyone else would have followed his lead and replied with, “So?” but Castiel isn’t anyone else, so instead he gives Dean his full attention, and waits patiently for him to continue.

“Um. I seem to be having a problem. With you.”

The inquisitive look on Castiel’s face takes on a sharp edge of alarm and Dean could kick himself. Doing great, dumbass.

“Wait. Let me start over... _You’re_ not a problem.“

The alarmed look doesn’t go away. Why would it, when Dean is knocking this whole expressing himself thing so far out of the park?

“I’m just realizing some things about me… in relation to you…” And this is exactly why Dean never opens up. He’s fucking bad at it and feelings are bullshit. It doesn’t help that the events of the past few days have left him feeling raw, and making himself vulnerable this way is less like poking a bruise and more like sticking his finger in a light socket. In this metaphor he’s both the finger _and_ the light socket.

Castiel’s looking less alarmed now and more like a puppy expecting a kick. “If you’d like me to leave…”

“No!” Dean barks.

And you know what? Words are overrated. Dean crosses the space between them and leans down, catching Castiel’s lips with his own. Cas tenses, and Dean’s about to pull away, before he feels Castiel’s hands on his arms where Dean’s bracing himself against the chair. Dean feels Castiel’s lips relax against his own. Feels him kiss back.

Dean lets it go on a few seconds before he pulls away, carefully studying Cas’s face for a reaction.

Cas looks awestruck, and a little dazed, but the expression soon melts into a confused frown. “I still require clarification.”

Dean can’t help it. He starts to laugh, the relief he’s feeling turning it a tiny bit hysterical. He’s tempted to just kiss Cas again by way of explanation -- he is, at the end of the day, an action guy, not a words guy -- but he knows that’s not what Cas needs. Cas needs words. 

And that’s okay. Dean’s pretty sure he has them now, or at the very least he can find them. He takes a deep breath and starts to talk.


End file.
